


… And Tore the World Asunder

by Devilc



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Soldiers, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jahar Narishma dreams he might have a destiny.  Along the way he meets Eben Hopwil and fights in a battle at Dumai's Well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	… And Tore the World Asunder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kore/gifts).



> The prompt was: "I'm quite serious in that I will take ANYTHING from this fandom. Preferably het or fem, but - really? Anything!"
> 
> I hope you enjoy this treat. 
> 
> I've had this idea niggling in the back of my brain for quite some time and I figured now or never. Jahar's reaction to Eben's death at the Battle Outside Shadar Logoth is, I feel, one of the most moving scenes in the whole series, it spoke of the depth of their friendship and the loss that Jahar felt now that Eben was dead. Those two had been through so much together and Rand trusted them like he trusted almost nobody else, and now, Jahar didn't have the one person who had always been there with him through all of this.
> 
> So, this is attempt to work out a bit of what I think it was like for Jahar. 
> 
> \---  
> Sorry for any mistakes, I'm posting this at the wire.

> We rode on the winds of the rising storm, we ran to the sounds of thunder.  
>  We danced among the lightning bolts, and tore the world asunder.

When Mazrim Taim made his trip through the borderlands, Jahar Narishma figured it this way: he could stay in Arafel, take over his father's shop and farm, marry one of the girls chasing after him, and … be there on the day the Trollocs swept down from the north; or he could go to Shol Arbela (the farthest he’d ever been from home before was a two day trip to Tifan’s Well) and muster into the King’s army and … be there on the day the Trollocs swept down from the north.

Or, he could roll the bones, go with Taim and maybe, _just maybe_ , he could stop the day the Trollocs swept down from the north, as they were certain to do, now that Rand al’Thor had been proclaimed The Dragon Reborn. And, if that was so, yes, he would probably go mad, as all men who could Channel eventually went mad, or die of some disease that not even Aes Sedai healing could cure, but better that, to die doing something, than to go mad from waiting.

And, if it didn’t work out, if he couldn’t Channel, well, there was always work for men from the Borderlands, he supposed. He had trained with a sling since he was a boy, and with sword and short-bow since he was old enough for the responsibility. He would hire on as an armed guard and by the time he got back to Arafel, at least he’d have seen a few of the things that Jaim Farstrider wrote about in his book. Or maybe he could go to the White Tower and see if they would take him in to train as a Warder, and he could fight by his Aes Sedai’s side. Jahar had met a Warder, once. He lived with two very old Aes Sedai in Tifan’s Well, and, for being a man as old as Jahar’s granda’s father, Jaem moved like a man much younger.

He slipped out in the middle of the night and left a note for his parents saying that he was a man now, with a man’s duties and that he didn’t know when he would be back, but he wanted to take the fight to the Shadow or die trying. He took his sword, his bow and arrows, an extra coat, a loaf of black bread and a small wheel of his mother’s best goat cheese, one that she had made special to take to market two days from now. He wrapped the six silver pieces and 10 coppers he’d managed to save up in his best kerchief and tucked them in his belt pouch. 

He paused before he walked out the door and left threepence for the cheese. 

His father hadn’t raised a thief.

~oo(0)oo~

When Jahar first saw the scrawny stripling of a boy with the bad skin and the big ears -- the kind he’d never grow into -- he figured him for a son of one of the older men in the camp. 

And then the lad heated the water in a large kettle simply by looking at it and lifted the carcass of hog, dunking it in and out of the furiously steaming water, simply by looking at it, and started scalding the bristles off of it.

“Hopwil,” Taim barked at him as they passed, “don’t always look where you plan to channel, or else your enemies might pick up on what you plan to do.”

Hopwil blushed as red as his spots and squeaked, “Yes, Master Taim.”

“Don’t let me catch you being so obvious again.” Taim’s warning wasn’t friendly.

A few steps later he said to Jahar, “Men usually start channeling later, but …” he shrugged, “boy came to me already having touched the source. He’ll be powerful if he doesn’t burn himself out.”

Jahar nodded. Taim had tested him earlier today, said he had the spark.

“Some of the others, they don’t like it, him and Morr being so young. But they’re not like you and I, Narishma. They’re not from the Borderlands.”

“They don’t know.” Jahar said quietly. 

~oo(0)oo~

Hopwil -- Eben he insisted on being called -- had already met The Dragon Reborn, Rand al’Thor, when he visited the Black Tower (as many called this farm) a few weeks back. He was tall and had bright red-gold hair, “Bright as an Aielman’s” and … he sounded quite grand in some ways, and reassuringly ordinary in others.

~oo(0)oo~

It was Eben and old Damer Flynn who gave him a cool dipper of water to help him wash his mouth out and a kerchief to wipe his face with the first time he fully touched the source and proceeded to sick up all over his boots. By the light! The Taint. Jahar shuddered just from the memory. The Taint was more foul than Eben and the others had described. Nobody tried to hide anything or mislead him. There just weren’t words for anything that bad. To say it was like a stagnant bog full of rotten sheep carcases and dead fish on a hot summer day only scratched the surface of the vileness.

But beneath that? The glorious raging _aliveness_ of Saidin’s torrent.

Jahar understood now why nobody could stop once they started. 

He knew it to his bones the moment he reached out and grabbed it, wrangling it like an ornery ram, bending it to his will to make a handspan of blue-hot flame. 

This? This was what he was born for.

~oo(0)oo~

At the end of a hard day he washed his hair, warming the water with a thin trickle of fire, lifting the bucket and soap with a thin thread of air; he went to wring the water out of it with another flow of air when he felt Eben channel Saidin, calling the water away while Jahar squeezed it out with air.

Eben looked a little taken aback under the intensity of his gaze and mumbled something about sorry to startle you, and, I did it without thinking, and then pursed his mouth in thought.

Jahar felt himself smile. It was hard to stay angry with Eben for long. “Out with it,” he said.

“I really wish we could link the way Aes Sedai can. That would be so useful.”

Jahar snorted. “Well we can’t. We can only -” he took a hold of air and parted his hair, “braid our flows, practice so we know how to work as a team.”

“Can I?” Eben asked.

“Sure.” A moment later as he felt uneven and faltering tugging against his scalp, he asked, “Eben, have you ever braided hair before?”

“Nope. But how hard can it be? I’ve seen you do it lots. Besides, I need to do something to practice the fine flows. Not everything is brute force, fireballs and blowing up mounds of earth and shattering stones. We need skill too, sometimes.”

“You rip a single hair out, and I’ll take it out of your hide.”

Eben snorted. “If you can.”

Jahar wound a flow of air around him, seized him by the ankles, and lifted him, upside down to the ceiling. He inverted the weave, too, for good measure.

“You’d better let me down easy unless you want a nest of elf-locks instead of a braid,” Eben replied, barely skipping a beat in his plaiting.

He had a point.

Jahar tied his own bells on. In Arafel, he explained, a man did that or his wife did, and unless Eben …. 

Eben blushed furiously when he realized what he’d almost done, but he was so flustered for hours after, that Jahar wondered if he’d ever kissed a girl much less held her hand.

~oo(0)oo~

Jahar saw Rand al’Thor briefly on the day he showed up and explained the ranks of the Asha’man and placed the pins on Taim. Later that day Taim called the names of several men (but not Eben’s, Fedwin’s, or Damer’s) and gave them all the pin of Dedicated. 

~oo(0)oo~

It was one thing to practice weaving gates and stepping through them for the purpose of practice; it was another to do it for a specific purpose.

The infinite rot washed through Jahar as he wove the flows and parted time and space. Few other Dedicated could open a gate as large as his. Barely three men could get through a gate that Damer wove. Mounted men on horses could ride five abreast through Jahar’s gates.

They didn’t need horses for this place, though. Men poured through into the dust, din, and blood of battle.

And when Taim said “Asha’man, kill!” They showed the world but a few of the ways that Taim had taught them to lay waste their enemies. 

That night as he and Eben took watch over captive Aes Sedai, Eben said softly, “Battle’s nothing like what I read in books.”

Jahar couldn't think of anything to say to that, except, “Half-men are worse than what you read in books, too.” He wished the words back as soon as he spoke them.

(He had nightmares about becoming a Myrddraal of late. A part of Jahar knew it was the Taint, the start of his madness. A part of him feared that it might actually become true -- that the evil that leached into him every time he grappled with Saidin might actually twist him into a half-man.)

He sucked in a deep breath. Stepped back from such thoughts. Focused on the here and now.

He was no longer helpless as a leaf in the whirlwind. He wasn’t waiting to die on a farm in Arafel, selling his life dearly to take down a (mere) fist of Trollocs, hoping that maybe there’d be something left in the remains of his house for the next person in need to use. Hoping that his wife and any children would be dead before they went into the cookpot.

By the light, he was Asha’man, and today they had made the world tremble before them. They had rocked the world on its axis, rocked it like it hadn't been rocked since the Breaking.

He fingered his collar. He hoped to earn his first pin soon.

A sword.

Badge or not, he was still a Soldier and a sword against the darkness.

Light willing he and young Eben would see the Last Battle, their swords at Rand al’Thor’s side.

They lived in a great age.

They were born to do great things.

He didn’t know _what_ yet, but he knew the Wheel had something special planned for him and Eben.

Knew it to the marrow of his bones.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know the quote comes from Crossroads of Twilight, but it seems so fitting for how Jahar Narishma might view his life


End file.
